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Maker Lab students scan 100 visitors at KidFest

During the popular KIDfest in Silver Spring in September, Bullis students set up a 3D scanner to scan visitors as they passed by. "Kids sat in front of an Xbox Kinect that we connected to special software," explained Bullis BITLab Coordinator Matt Zigler. "The scanner uses infrared light to determine depth and create a digital three dimensional model of the sitter."

Nearly 100 visitors were 3D scanned during the event, and all of them received electronic files of their images.

The Bullis students who ran the scanner—Austin Brown '20, Sammy Houdaigui '21, Remy Poulin '21 and Tomas Yang '17—are students in Mr. Zigler's Maker Lab class in the new Discovery Center.

"Students are given wide latitude to select projects that they are interested in pursuing, so there are lots of projects happening at the same time," said Mr. Zigler about the class. Students use the teacher, the internet and each other as resources to help complete their projects. Depending on what the student (or students if they choose to work as a group) decides to create, the project could last a few class periods or a few weeks. "Right now I have students working on a sign for college counseling, a half-scale portable ping-pong table, a 3D printed robotic hand, silk-screened t-shirts and 3D printed pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness... among other things."

Part of the class curriculum requires students to create projects in three areas: Making to Teach, Making for Good, and Making as a Group. "They can come up with their own projects to address these themes or tackle a project that has been proposed by myself, a community member or someone outside of the community," said Mr. Zigler. "KIDFest had asked us to participate, and the four students volunteered to work the event as part of their Making to Teach requirement. They had to become comfortable with the scanner and its software, test out workflows, create a poster with information about how the scanner worked and how participants could make their own, and finally run the booth at KIDfest."

The innovation and technology lab at Bullis has computers and 3-D printers, which two lacrosse players, Ethan Till and Tyler Kuehl, are using to make protective masks.

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